


the huntsman's heart

by nookiepoweredamazon



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: 1x07, Angst, F/F, F/M, Revenge, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-29
Updated: 2015-04-29
Packaged: 2018-03-26 07:07:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3841687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nookiepoweredamazon/pseuds/nookiepoweredamazon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Regina hasn't taken a heart in twenty-eight years when she rests Graham’s softly glowing heart in her palm.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the huntsman's heart

Regina hasn't taken a heart in twenty-eight years when she rests Graham’s softly glowing heart in her palm. 

It’s oddly familiar, the weight of it. It’s smooth and warm and the rush she feels holding it, cradling life in her hands, is breathtaking. 

But she knows this heart. She’s dragged her lips across his pulse point and rested her head on his chest on and off for the better half of three decades - and that’s long enough to memorize a heartbeat, even if the rhythm in his body is only superficial. Long enough that the cadence, intimate as it is, feels a bit like home. 

Graham’s heart is fragile, like the little bird Regina found beneath an oak tree as a girl, and it flutters similarly helpless in her palm. It’s odd to think of nights spent scraping over his body with her teeth and tongue and too much bite - to remember digging her claws in - when she can see now that he’s something so small. 

(Regina had kept the injured bird in a little white cage. She’d fed it scraps and sung to it, stayed up with it all night; but its life had still stuttered out in the end. It was a wild, broken thing, unable to survive in her cage, and she thinks now that Graham’s heart is much the same.)

The vault is dark and cold but Graham’s heart glows bright and hot, and if she closes her eyes she can almost pretend he’s there with her, that he made the right choice and they left side by side -

But he’s not, and he didn't - and Regina can feel his heart beating harder for Emma, hear it whispering all her graces. Holding it there against her skin she can feel what it’s like to be slipping slowly, gratefully, in love with Emma Swan. 

It is sunshine and lemongrass and that horrible red jacket. It is a sweet soft mouth tilted down in a near-permanent frown, just starting to smile. 

Kissing Emma - feeling Graham kiss Emma - is like a shot of whiskey. It is a quick kick followed by a slow burn, an impossible warmth bleeding from Regina’s throat down deep into her chest. It has a startlingly intoxicating, borderline addictive quality, and it is something she knows instantly she will never forget. 

Something, she knows, Graham will never forget either. 

Regina hasn't taken a heart in twenty-eight years, but it still bleeds like a fresh wound when she closes her fingers around Graham’s heart and begins to squeeze.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my kickass beta, [midnightbokeh](http://midnightbokeh.tumblr.com/). Shout-out to [arcticdrunkey](http://arcticdrunkey.tumblr.com/) for the whiskey analogy, which I shamelessly stole.


End file.
